PHOTOS COURTESY BRENDA PAULSEN; TIM WRIGHT(Clockwise from top left) A statue on the
street in Mindelo, São Vincente, Cape Verde;
the author’s wife inspecting the rip in the
Parasailor; Thanksgiving dinner on the high
sea; the author and his wife crossing the
finish line in St. Lucia; Asylum under sail44APRIL 2015morning, my favorite part of each day. We had
no formal watch schedule during the day but
took naps as needed. Our two rules were that
the person on watch had to be tethered to the
boat and couldn’t leave the cockpit while the
other was sleeping.
Two days out of Las Palmas Asylum was
number 43 on the leaderboard, but we came
on strong and finished 33rd of 50 boats. After
applying a handicap and a penalty for motor-
ing—of which we did little—we expected to
win third or fourth place in our class, a surreal
feeling given we were vying for hardware
against some really salty sailors. Unfortunately,
due to my bad penmanship, our declaration for
motoring hours was logged as 76 hours instead
of seven, and we came in 10th in a field of 11.
Humbling! (Postscript: we were later presented
with a duplicate third-place trophy.)
On a happier note, we were enthralled by
the Cape Verdes. Compared to the Caribbean,
or even the Canaries, the people, the climate
and the landscapes of the Cape Verdes seem
distinctly different. After a couple of days of
exploring (and catching up on sleep) we set
off on the “Big Leg” to the Caribbean. By now
it was clear that one of the biggest blessings of
the rally experience was the friendships and
relationships we built with other people from
all over the world. LEG TWO: CAPE VERDES TO
ST. LUCIA—2,090 MILES
The start of leg two was on a spectacularly
beautiful day, so while I was negotiating the
start line, Brenda was busy snapping photos of
our new friends. That first night I counted 38
sets of nav lights around us.
A friend once told me an Atlantic crossingis mostly boredom with moments of terror
mixed in. He must not have been a double-
hander. With just Brenda and me on board,
our days were anything but boring. Everything,
even cooking and eating, takes twice as long on
a rolling boat. We cleaned and dried cushions
and linen that were wet with seawater, wiped
the salt off the stainless steel, inspected the rig,
and fixed or jury-rigged whatever broke each
day. In our free time we read, played games
and talked. And of course, we slept whenever
possible as the boat moaned and clanked and
shuddered around us.
Then there were the moments of terror.
One came in the black of the night as we
wrestled with the Parasailor spinnaker after
it had wrapped itself around the mast when
the autopilot suddenly shut down without
notice. The noise was deafening. The sheet
had whipped behind the boat, snapped Old
Glory off her flagpole and was tight against
the dinghy davits.
It amazed me how disoriented I became try-
ing to steer the boat in a circle to unwind the